President Barack Obama signed legislation Wednesday, March 14, exempting the proposed St. Croix River bridge from the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and allowing the project to move forward.

“I’m just really happy that this has gotten done,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said hours after the signing. “After 30 years of debate and delay, this is long overdue.”

The bridge – expected to cost as much as $676 million – will connect Oak Park Heights and St. Joseph, Wis., diverting traffic from the aging Stillwater Lift Bridge.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation will build and test sample foundation elements in the river this summer. Construction is expected to start in 2014 and take three years.

Klobuchar said she was chairing a hearing and voting on a bill when the president signed the legislation.

“There was a lot going on in the Senate today, but I think the most important thing is not that we were there for a photo op, but that the bill actually got signed,” she said.

U.S. Rep Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who introduced bridge legislation that passed the House this month, said in a statement that construction on the “common-sense, four-lane bridge project” can officially begin.

“I commend the president for signing this important piece of legislation,” Bachmann said. “I also extend my sincere gratitude to my colleagues in the Senate and the House.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker responded to news of the president’s signature by saying in a statement, “This is a great day for Wisconsin.

“The St. Croix River Crossing is a great example of what happens when everyone puts their differences aside, focuses on the needed end result and works together to successfully get something done,” Walker said. “And Wisconsin is better off for it.”

Minnesota and Wisconsin will share the costs of the project.

Stillwater Mayor Ken Harycki said he was “extremely happy” to learn of the president’s signature.

“It represents the culmination of a lot of years of hard work by everybody, by our politicians, citizens (and) former mayors,” Harycki said

“There’s satisfaction knowing that all the hard work paid off, and yet on the other hand you sit back and look at it and say, ‘We shouldn’t have had to work that hard on something that made so much sense,’ ” he said.

Plans for the bridge have been stalled for decades, challenged in court by environmental groups and held up by the National Parks Service, which has jurisdiction over the St. Croix.

U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., also commended the president for signing the bridge legislation, saying in a statement, “Today we celebrate an important victory.”

“I’m proud that my colleagues and I were able to come together to see this important project through,” he said. “The people of the St. Croix River Valley will finally get the bridge they need and deserve.”

Daryl Standafer, chair of the St. Croix County board of supervisors, said the president’s signature is an affirmation of everyone’s efforts to make the new bridge a reality.

“I just think that it puts the final capstone on a tremendous effort to bring to conclusion a nearly 60-year effort,” Standafer said.

The Minnesota and Wisconsin departments of transportation “will move forward with beginning the project and the quality of life in the St. Croix Valley and Twin Cities metropolitan area will be enhanced because of it,” he said. “We have an opportunity now to build a legacy bridge.”

Progress on the bridge stalled most recently in October 2010 when the National Park Service – reversing an earlier opinion – said the bridge should not be allowed because the river is protected by the U.S. Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

While the bill exempting the bridge from the act passed the Senate unanimously, 80 members of the House voted against it.

Among them was Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., who has called the project “fiscally irresponsible” and “a boondoggle.”

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